BYOD concerns, costs increasing

Many people would take an unreasonably long time to recover their data if their IT systems were to go down, and tape backups still have an important part to play. These are the findings of a survey carried out for Norwegian storage experts.

Proact charts Norwegian companies’ attitudes towards information management every year. This survey, carried out by an independent body, involves telephone interviews with 200 decision-makers and provides an insight into what Norwegian companies are thinking as regards storage and information management.

Seven in ten respondents reckon that their departments are receiving enough resources to meet demands in terms of quality and uptime. Six in ten are concerned about what business information employees can store using external cloud services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Apple iCloud and suchlike. 55 per cent have refused to allow staff to connect private devices to company computers and software.

“A few respondents had no clear opinion on ‘bringing your own device’. This indicates that the topic is being discussed widely and that good answers are being sought,” says Eirik Pedersen, Managing Director of Proact.

Willingness to invest
Data volumes are continuing to grow at a tremendous pace. No fewer than six in ten respondents say that they will be increasing their volumes by anything from eleven to 50 per cent this year (predominantly in the 11-25 per cent category). The majority of companies resolve these problems by buying disks. The next most common solution involves deleting duplicates and old information, and demanding that employees remove private content.

“More surprising is the fact that one in ten respondents say that they have no idea of how much growth to expect. This may mean that a fairly large number of Norwegian companies may have some unpleasant surprises coming.”

43 per cent say that the amount they spend on storage has remained unchanged or been reduced over the past year. This is a clear change compared with 2011, when six in ten found that their costs had fallen or remained at the same level. One in four did not know, and 20 per cent saw an increase in excess of 20 per cent. At the same time, 65 per cent are planning to extend existing solutions for storage, backup and archiving or to buy new ones in 2013. Two in ten are considering investing in converged data centre solutions.

Four in ten have either started using external cloud services for data storage, backup or archiving, or are planning to introduce this within a short time.

“Surprisingly enough, this is a flat development compared with last year’s survey, in which this number had doubled since 2010. This shows that service providers still have some work to do on sharing expertise in order to remove doubt and uncertainty,” says Pedersen.

Better procedures
Nine in ten respondents have carried out health checks on their storage solutions over the past year. Seven in ten have crisis plans which are tested and improved at regular intervals.

“We saw relatively flat development here as well, and we find this both surprising and disappointing. If there are no decent procedures in place, companies may find themselves facing enormous costs if an IT accident happens. At the same time, we can see that more than half of our respondents would spend days or weeks recovering data, so there is potential for a lot of companies to be faced with huge costs. That said, we are pleased about this finding because last year, 65 per cent of respondents said they would needs days or weeks to recover their data.”

Only 10 per cent would spend less than an hour recovering their data.
“This ought to be the norm, given how advanced technology is nowadays and the fact that storing critical data at secure external locations is relatively cheap. Moreover, 66 per cent of respondents say that more than half their data is business-critical, so there are a lot of companies that really should get their act together.

“Tape backups are still widespread. More than half of our respondents are continuing with this practice and claim this will not change anytime soon. At the same time, most respondents want to maintain their own control over the day-to-day running of backups.”

For further information, please contact:
Eirik Pedersen, Managing Director, Tel.: +47 930 34134, E-mail: Eirik.Pedersen@proact.no

About Proact
Proact is Europe’s leading independent storage integrator and cloud services enabler. Delivering business agility since 1994, Proact helps organisations across the globe to reduce risk and cost, and most importantly to supply flexible, available and highly secure IT services.

Proact’s solutions cover all aspects of data storage, virtualisation, networking and security – with over 3,500 projects successfully delivered and 10PB of data under management in the Proact Enterprise Cloud.

The Proact Group has more than 700 employees and conducts business in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Proact was founded in 1994 and its parent company, Proact IT Group AB (publ) has been listed on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm since 1999 under the symbol PACT.

Additional information about Proact is available at www.proact.eu

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